I've used GIMP in Windows and Linux for years. NEVER a problem with it starting. Yesterday, when attempting to start - nothing. I checked for the process in system monitor, its listed as a zombie. So I killed the proc and started it from terminal, and got some interesting, tho mystifying feedback. I find no info on GIMP.org Any ideas? I reinstalled GIMP via Synaptic, in case the program somehow got corrupted, but no joy. Gimp 2.8, which I've had installed and used many times before this happended. I have no idea what to do with this -- suggestions? In the meantime, I'm limping with Pinta, but its a very nice, tho basic, substitute.

$ gimpThe program 'gimp' received an X Window System error.This probably reflects a bug in the program.The error was 'BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)'. (Details: serial 12 error_code 1 request_code 136 minor_code 19) (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously; that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it. To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

Open your file manager, press Ctrl+H to show hidden files and folders, and rename/move your .gimp-2.8 folder. Starting GIMP should then give you a new profile and hopefully this is a profile with your profile. If that doesn't help, you can rename/move the folder back.

I did a search for 'serial 12 error_code 1 request_code 136 minor_code 19' on Google, and people in the 3 threads I found are mostly talking about graphics drivers.Have you changed GPU or updated the drivers recently? Maybe an update/change/rollback/reinstall of those might be a place to start..

I attempted to install proprietary AMD/ATI proprietary FGLRX graphics driver using the Additional Drivers app a couple of weeks ago. But if failed, and the app no says "This driver is not activated" So I presume there was no driver change.

I uninstalled and reinstalled using Synaptic, and again using commands above. Attempt to run gimp again, got the same error message.

I discovered that I had an entry in my repository for GIMP 2.8 -- something containing "kesselgulasch" I vaguely recall adding this so that I could get v 2.8 while the official repository only offered 2.6. I was tired of waiting around for 2.8 when a four year old version 2.6 was still the only official offering.

I removed the un-official repository, updated, purged gimp, reinstalled it from software manager and voila - it runs....BUT it is v 2.6

Now according to the GIMP site "Ubuntu or Debian users can simply run apt-get install gimp to get the latest stable release of GIMP. Ubuntu users can also install GIMP from Software Centre." So I should have gotten v 2.8.6, but instead got the old thing GIMP.

Well, as you can see from you using the Ubuntu "precise" repositories instead of the Ubuntu "quantal" ones, you aren't using Linux Mint 14. You are in fact using Linux Mint 13. Hence the ancient GIMP version. Or something is very wrong with your repository configuration, if it is pointing to the wrong Ubuntu repositories.

Can I simply change all "precise" to "quantal" in the file, then do a dist upgrade?

Yes you can, though in additional to replacing "precise" with "quantal" please first confirm on the Linux Mint repository in that file you see "nadia" as a distribution name and not "maya". Else you really are running Linux Mint 13.

In any case, before you even attempt to do a dist-upgrade please make a backup of your personal files--dist-upgrade may very well give you problems (usually solvable, but better safe than sorry).

Also, you should not only edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list but also any files in the folder /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

If you have maya in your sources.list file, you are in fact running Linux Mint 13. You could replace maya with nadia and precise with quantal, and that would upgrade you to Linux Mint 14 if you run the command `sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade`--but Ubuntu users report a 20% failure rate of doing an upgrade to a new version in place like that. It's risky and you might have to face fixing some problems from the recovery mode root console. If you don't know what that is, you're not ready to take this gamble IMHO.